NO to “climate smart agriculture”: the potential of agroecology and the challenges faced by its promoters

The coordinator of the Environmental Justice program at the Brazilian office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Maureen Santos, highlighted the need for social movements and peasant communities to reaffirm agroecology and not allow it to be coopted by the official discourse that speaks of “climate smart agriculture”.

Santos stated that this agriculture, promoted by companies and the United Nations itself, views natural resources as environmental service providers, for instance, carbon sequestration. She added that “climate smart agriculture” generates environmental impacts (through technology packages with GMOs and agrotoxics) and social impacts on the communities inhabiting the territories.

The Brazilian activist was interviewed by Real World Radio in Rosario, Argentina, at the “Regional Meeting of Transitioning Agriculture: impacts, threats and alternatives to the agroindustrial model”, organized in August by the regional office of the Heinrich Böll foundation.

Santos considers that social movements need to highlight the already proven merits of agroecology in the fight against climate change, although without falling in the logic of the official discourse. “It is worrying sometimes to hear colleagues say “we also capture carbon”. We can´t reproduce this narrative. It is a dispute of the hegemonic narrative”.

According to the Environmental Justice program coordinator at the Brazilian office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the crisis goes beyond climate change, because it a much broader environmental crisis, even a civilization crisis. “And sometimes we go too deep in the narrative of climate change and we end up buying this hegemonic discourse”.

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